Thursday, January 3, 2013

Any ideas for new leads for Print Management Solutions?

The above title was taken from a thread I found on linkedin. I'm assuming the person is asking the group for new ideas for Print Management leads.  Of course the solutions part may mean the utilization of print management software like Print Audit, Preton, etc...  The person who posted the thread works for a company that sells print and copy management solutions.  There were some replies to this thread however all of them were not related to a "new idea for print management leads".

I paid a visit to the web site of the company that the person who posted the thread works for.  The web site was as generic as you can get for copiers, printers, document management etc.  It's no wonder that the sales person is looking for new ideas, one look at the web site would tell me that the website is not generating any leads.

So, what can be some new ideas to generate print management leads for this person?

1. Dang, put something on the website that tells your potential prospects or existing customers that you are in that business (print management).

2. You need to enable your current customers to
talk about your company, whether through social media (twitter, linkedin, facebook, letters of reference) and then capture those threads and statements and get them up on your web site.  You could actually have a small area on the web site that can have a scrolling marque of your social media interaction.

3. Put a blog on your web site, and have your marketing person work with sales admin to review each sale.  The idea is to then have your marketing person do an "interview" with the sales person and ask them ten questions about the sale. Ask how they found the customer, what the customers needs were, were there any 3rd party solutions used, what vertical market is the prospect in.  The next step is to then call the customer and ask them four questions only.

They should be something like these:

A: How did you find out about XYT office solutions?
B: What was special and unique about our solution?
C: Why did you buy from us?
D: Is there anything you didn't like about us? (hopefully this will be a no answer, if there is an answer to this of course you'll not want to post this, but use it as a way to improve your company or the products that you sell)

With all of this data, you can put together a short 300-400 word blog/story about each sale. I would try to write one a week.  Better if you can get to two per week.  When they are finished and uploaded on the website you'll then need to distribute them through your social media accounts like linkedin, twitter, and facebook.  Now you'll have your customers talking about your company! 

Since you'll be adding new blogs once or twice a week, you'll have a better chance of someone picking up that blog when they are searching the web for information.  There's not a day that doesn't go by that I don't use a web search engine. Almost everyone will do some sort of review before they call a company for information about a product or a service.

Will this generate leads?

Absolutely, but you've got to be dedicated to this type of marketing.  Personally, I've written about 1,200 blogs and there's not a month that goes by where I don't get a lead/leads, whether it's for a company wanting to advertise on my site/blog or whether it's a lead for office equipment or solutions.

Enthusiasm is contagious, good news travels quicker than bad news and after six months or so you'll be reaping the rewards of additional leads for your company!

-=Good Selling=-




1 comment:

Greg_Walters said...

Art -

This kind of thing is everywhere.

In this situation, I would start by changing the phrase "Print Management Solutions" = PMS

Duh.